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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

When looking over the lengthy cycle of mummy movies, one
in particular often goes heavily unmentioned, and that’s Spanish actor,
filmmaker Paul Naschy’s take on the
mummy myth, The Mummy’s Revenge / La venganza
de la Momia.

Being somewhat of a tragic love story, The Mummy’s Revenge is rather faithful to the original Universal
film and is also easy to compare to the 1959 Hammer reboot as well. What sets The Mummy’s Revenge apart is that it’s
a Paul Naschy film, meaning it’s
going to be a little more erotic, a little meaner, more fearsome, more violent,
and more personal. There is also a sadomasochistic element too, with a number
of maidens strung up for both amusement and sacrificial purposes.

The film is
directed by Carlos Aured and is
written by and stars Naschy. It is
one of four collaborations between Naschy
and Aured, with the other three being
theseminal Horror Rises from the Tomb (1972), part of the Waldemar Daninsky
Werewolf cycle Curse of the Devil (1972),
and the Spanish giallo Blue Eyes of the
Broken Doll (1973). The Mummy’s
Revenge is Naschy’s second, and
more focused, take on the mummy, as the creature did appear in Naschy’s horror/sci-fi monster mashup Assignment Terror (1970), along with
aliens, the werewolf, Frankenstein's monster, and Dracula.

Throughout the ‘50s,
Aurora starred in a number of
Spanish/Italian comedies and dramas, most of which seem to either have been
forgotten or fallen into obscurity. As the Euro film industry shifted its
output to different genres in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Aurora managed to land roles in Euro-westerns: Un hombre vino a matar (1967) and Su le mani, cadavere! Sei in arresto (1971) (under the direction of
Leon Klimovsky); Euro-spies, Agente X 1-7 operazione Oceano (1965)
and Top Secret (1967); and Euro-horrors
La Marca del Hombre-lobo (1968), La rebelión de las muertas (1973), and La orgía de los muertos (1973). The
three aforementioned horror films also starred Paul Naschy and seem to have been the most accessible. In addition,
she was frequently directed by José Luis
Merino. After starring in a line of comedies and dramas in the latter half
of the ‘70s, her movie career seemed to have taken an abrupt halt at the end of
the decade. What she was up to after that is probably anyone’s guess.

Some
sources list her as an Italian actress,
while others show her as a Spanish actress. Aurora is actually of Spanish origin, however she did get married in Italy and most likely lived there for a time. Another source lists her birth date as February 2nd, 1948;
this cannot be true, however, because, as was mentioned before, she was married in 1954, and the following image of her below is from the 1953 Venice Film
Festival, and looking to be somewhere in her early twenties at that time, it is
probably not a far cry to assume she was born sometime in the ‘20s or ‘30s.